I have to admit that for a little while I thought I was a tactical Genius... The reason for this flood of over confidence was the fact that I have beat the game twice, on black hole, and once I lost only 2 crew members, and the other time I didn't lose a single crew member. I thought I was awesome, but then I realized that I was just exploiting a game mechanic. So what happened was... after the first time I ran through the game with the little ship, I went to work... and at work I have lots of small 3-5 min breaks, which isn't long enough to enjoy the game as it should be, but it is enough to "tinker"... so I noticed that every time my crew made a coin/token (in dodge Gen, Pro. Torp., Sheild Gen., Etc...) that they would gain experience... so I drilled them... and by drilled them I mean... I made them make tokens... repeatedly... and then jettisoned said tokens into space (aka deleted them).... by doing so my crew was able to have 30/30/30 and unlock all the skills... and all it took was a entire day of not really having my mind on my job... So what I was attributing to my tactical genius, was actually better attributed to the the fact that everyone in a red shirt was able to exercise the "rapid fire" skill....And all of my engineers had the "instant repair" skill... you get the point... the best crew in the galaxy as the result of a little... actually a LOT (entire day at work) of nerdling tinkering... aka doing drills and "simulations" in my mind the bridge looked like this "Dammit Jim, I'm only a Doctor, but this isn't good for Morale" "Quite bones, we are going to do it again, until it's perfect"... you get the point... but the campaign is surprisingly easier on black hole when your entire crew is 30/30/30 and has all skills...

But then it hit me... i never got the pleasure of having the exciting moments that the rest of the forum is talking about... i mean hull breaches are no biggie when all your Engs have instant repair... well for the most part...

So I thought of a fix... maybe you could limit the overall number of points that a character can attribute based on rank...and then let rank experience only go up as the result of missions... so for example, an ensign would have a total of 30 points to split three ways, while a commander would have 90... so that way, crew is actually worth something... when I lost the two crew members, I just hired two new ones, and sat at earth "drilling" until they were 30/30/30... Got to figure out a way to make crew... less expendable.

*sorry if I'm bringing up anything that's allready been discused but I'm not reading 5 pages of blog to see if it has.

As far as damage, efficiency, and population are concerned, you could create a new menu that would give a blueprint layout of the ship, high lighting areas of interest, and detailing them on command. You would have no interaction from this menu but it would pause the game giving the player time to plan and properly strategies.

Different controls may be more effective for this menu type, but the general idea is what I'm preaching.

i need to add to the discussions regarding crew members and vacuums/hull breaches.

It should be possible to direct crew members to go the long way around, to avoid hull breaches, fires, enemy troops. It should be simpler to move crew members into ambush positions during combat situations. Unfortunately, crew members automatically begin walking shortest distances, including engineering crew, when trying to position them to fix breaches. Often directly across a breach.

that being said, i do appreciate the wavy lines indicating active breaches and escaping atmosphere, it does make it easier to notice new breaches, but in some of the ships, the hull breaches occur behind 'walls' and since there is no way to rotate and zoom the ship to check for additional breaches, or even hidden crewpersons, it is often difficult to plan appropriate maneuvers.

Requests.
ships with more than two gun placements. a counter that indicates maximum crew potential on each ship class, in each room.

complaint.
it is often very difficult to select a crewperson, and in groups of crewperson, to zoom large enough to select a specific crewperson. and when a crewperson is selected, it is occassionally in crowds specifically, hard to tell which crew is selected, glowing hair or uniforms would be helpful

thank you for a fun game, the first several runs through have been exciting and each increase in level has created more challenge, but um, i am really excited about the chance to have new adventures...

just played through the Normal set of missions this weekend - love where the game is heading.

Just want to share what I found difficult when learning to play and UI/UX suggestions to help. I understand that this may have just been my own ineptitude and lack of intuition. If it counts for anything - in my defence I've played Star Control II without much problems.

One thing was that I really struggled to understand the 'tool tips' pictures for token generation esp. using dodge token in the shield generator. I didn't understand what the ammo button was and since the initial tutorial made me start with the laser cannon, which didn't require ammo, I never built the "ammo" for the dodge shield (also tutorial recommended). I ended up trying to frantically tap the red targeting icon whenever the enemy ship was firing at me, and not understanding why I kept getting hit. Eventually after stopping the game and spending 5 minutes on the internet, I worked out that I was meant to generate a dodge token - it was just called "ammo".
> A "Details" button with a text description anytime where you've just given the 'tools tips' picture would have really helped.

Second thing would be if I saw one engineer get sucked through a hull breach during a battle, it seemed a bit cruel to send another of my crew to the same area just because the battle has stopped (space still being a vacuum and all). It took a while for me to realise that they weren't going to repair my hull at Earth (seemed that's what space ports would do) and instead I should send my engineers to repair it - just not in battle.
> Please include a small section in the tutorial where an engineer is shown to repair a hull breach after a battle is finished.

Lastly, something really trivial (but still would have saved me restarting my game) is I completed missed naming the captain at the start since I didn't think notice it was editable.
> A blinking cursor on "YOUR NAME" when you are creating your captain might have helped.

I'd like to agree that the "Ammo" buttons were confusing. Somewhere in the room, perhaps on an in-game monitor, there might be a display saying "0 revives" or "2 turrets" or "1 grenade", and that number should also be somewhere beside the activation button on the crewman menu.

I'd like to see each room have configuration on how many crew members are optional - that is, how many can be permitted to be pulled off-station for automated or semi-automated selection and/or tasking.

This would let the player select groups without having to make a detailed interface that fits on a phone to allocate every individual crew member to a group. If the default 'excess' was 50% staff, that would leave one crew member at work in most rooms, two in engineering and on the bridge, when the player dispatched all crew members of a type to respond to a threat. It would also (hopefully) ensure that you didn't engage threats or damage with the same crew members all the time, giving other crew some healing/fixing/fighting experience.

I'd also like to see quickbuttons alongside the weapon/system controls for automated, full-crew action. The tactical button could pull every tactical officer that's 'optional', and route them to the nearest point in line-of-sight and weapon range of an invader, while avoiding fire/blowout tiles. Science officers would route to the nearest injured crew to heal, until none are left, avoiding unshielded blowouts. Engineering would head to the nearest damage to repair, (excluding that near unshielded blowouts,) and repair it. A last button would return all crew not working in their assigned room to return to duty.

It may be becoming quickly clear that I like games which permit large-scale activity without micromanagement, when needed. If micromanagement is integral to the game you're trying to make, these buttons could be used to select the next "Optional" crewman of that type that is either still working in a room, or is not active doing . . . what they do. (Fighting, healing, fixing.)

I'd like to see idle animations, so that it's fairly obvious when a science officer in a science room is NOT hard at work in that room. Playing with cards, juggling, standing around reading a book, bouncing a ball on the ground, playing with a yo-yo.

I'd like to see more instant feedback when a weapon is ready to fire. I can activate a weapon before it first flashes, resulting in me tap-tap-tapping a weapon's icon as it fills up until it is available to fire. Which has resulted in more than one flubbed first torpedo shot.

I believe this game definitely needs a feature where you can pause the game and issue multiple orders to crew members. This would make combat better and allow for alien difficulty increase as you yourself can now better manage your crew.

I agree with that, for both the obvious reasons, and because the 'select a crew member or room to pause' is not as effective as it seems. While normally I could pause by selecting a crew member and carefully shift crew to respond to a threat swiftly, in the instance of boarding operations I have to move quickly, or else the time spent playing the beaming-in animation, which my bridge crew could spend rushing to meet the threat, is instead consumed by my careful, painstaking selection of where to place a single crewman.

Had a couple of thoughts. How about flashing floor tiles on which a crew member can be swept into a vacuum, like you currently highlight damaged walls?

Next, a thought on the crew count in the "Output" panels. Right now the captain counts twice, but is not necessarily shown, in the screen, to be the same crewman. That is to say, it looks like the game's making a mistake. I think there should be an additional UI element to show that this double-count is intentional. My first thought is to grey-out and dim the second captain, to a) show the player a difference between the captain, and the second crew spot he occupies, and b) to show that the game itself makes a division between the captain and the second crew-spot occupied by the captain; in effect, to reassure the player that this isn't an error.